2008 Awards

THERE WILL BE BLOOD AND HUNGER DOMINATE DUBLIN FILM CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS

The DublinFilmCritics Circle has named Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will be Blood as the best film of 2008. Hunger, Steve McQueen’s searing study of Bobby Sands’s last days, was selected as the best Irish film. There Will be Blood was a comfortable winner in the main category, but Lance Daly’s fine Kisses – a low-budget Dublin fable – ran McQueen’s more fancied film very close in the Irish derby. The main acting competitions were walkovers with Kristin Scott Thomas’s turn in the French drama I’ve Loved You So Long and Daniel Day Lewis’s huge performance in There Will be Blood leaving their rivals puffing distantly in their wake. McQueen, originally a gallery-based visual artist, won the award for best breakthrough and another artist who has shifted media – playwright Martin McDonagh – was runner up for the cult hit In Bruges. Other films attracting attention included The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, No Country for Old Men and – ignored by most other awards panels -- Nadine Labaki’s bewitching Caramel. The DFCC, which polls professional critics in the capital, limits its selection to those films released in Ireland during the calendar year and, as a result, many of the pictures jockeying for attention in the current American awards season are deemed ineligible. This also explains why some of last year’s Oscar winners – released early in the year in this territory – make it onto the list. The DFCC was set up three years ago to gather the thoughts of the city’s critics and to stage special events. Last year the body presented its first Maverick Award – a set of fabulous cufflinks – to the great John Waters. More activity is brewing.

BEST FILM 1 There Will Be Blood 2. Hunger 3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly 4. No Country for Old Men 5. Wall-E 6. Gomorra 7. Man on Wire (pictured above) 8. The Dark Knight 9. 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days 10. Lars and the Real Girl.